DIVENTARE UNA DONNA. ALBA DE CÉSPEDES ATTRAVERSO SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

In 1949, Alba de Céspedes published Dalla Parte di Lei, a novel that, through the story of Alessandra Corteggiani, expresses the dichotomies marking a woman’s life: the incompatibility between duty and aspirations, between love and marriage, between ideal and reality, between identity and social roles. Also in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir published Le Deuxième Sexe, an essay meant to become a cornerstone of the feminist thought, in which she narrates the female condition through its historical and cultural stratification (between facts, myths and lived experience). This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the two authors based on a comparative analysis of Dalla Parte di Lei and Le Deuxième Sexe, describing in different ways and forms the same woman’s condition. Bovarism and Beauvoir’s notion of ‘conjugal love’ will be particularly relevant to analyse Alessandra’s story in Dalla parte di lei, which seems to be the narrative counterpart of the woman’s frustration path outlined in the second volume of The Second Sex.